FEDERMAN'S BLOG [the laugh that laughs at the laugh...]

Laugh: yes because when some guy weeps somewhere in the world there is always some other guy who laughs somewhere else: happy balance! Never fails its normal equilibrium: laugh or cry it all comes out the same in the end!

There I go again. What I mean is possibly this, that the noises of the world, as various in themselves and which I used to be so clever in distinguishing from one another, had been dinning at me for so long, always the same old noise, as gradually to have merge into a single noise, so that all I heard was vast continuous buzzing.

George [Chambers] writes:

Federman you know this picture so large huge disturbing the cover picture among the angels I must gaze at flood me with feeling....it makes me not want to weep I'm sitting here near weeping I must look away I can't look I try to fumble the finger gesture it's the bare the body the cap of hair the opacity of the eyes the collar bone the shoulder bone the eyebrows the hair caps the face of scars the disembodied hand stuffing the finger into the skull it summons you forth it's unbearable

[Ray] Federman replies:

finally a photographer who knows how to capture the interior of the subject the guy told me when he walked into my hotel room I am not going to photograph you to make you look better

I want to photograph how you really are inside and damn did he do it he closed all the curtains in the room took his vest off put me against a curtain and started shooting and each time he had shot a photo he would breathe out in a very strange manner that resembles the moaning lovers do when they reach the clouds and then after a good half hour of digging inside me with his camera he suddenly said take off your shirt oh shit I thought the fucking guy is a pederast and wants to not at all he told me about his wife his kids his family well that was my way of getting it out of him when he asked me to take off my shirt I had to defend myself so I said are you married I said that in french of course since this was in my Paris hotel room that this scene was taking place I am translating for the commodity of the narrative and when he said he was and talked about the kids and even mentioned the in-laws I knew I was safe so I let it out all the perversion ugliness twisteness ebullitions energy viciousness kindness generosity and more that I have in me and that's all there in the photo as the finger is trying to point out

2002 THE TWILIGHT OF THE BUMS (Microfiction, with George Chambers). Altx Press [Boulder, Colorado] Also available as an E- book from Altx.com. German translation (Suhrkamp Verlag), 1998, under the title Penner-Rap. Radio play adaptation under the title The Dialogues of the Bums, Bayerischer Rundfunk, 1997.

2001 LOOSE SHOES: A life Story of Sorts (Fiction in English & French). Weidler Buchverlag (Berlin). German translation under the title Offene Schuhe [same publisher]. Loose Shoes -- Musical composition by Michael Riessler performed in Munich, Ulm, Frankfurt, Cologne, May 2000.

1999 THE PRECIPICE AND OTHER CATASTROPHES (Collected Plays, bilingual edition, English/German). Poetry Salzburg (Austria). Radio play adaptation by Deutschland Radio (Berlin) 1998.

1998 FEDERMAN : FROM A to X-X-X-X [A Recyclopedic Narrative, Edited by Larry McCaffery, Douglas Rice, Thomas Hartl, in collaboration with the author]. San Diego State University Press. Limited edition.

1996 THE LINE (Fiction, chapbook, special limited edition). The Club of Odd Volumes (Amherst, New York). Limited edition. Translated into French.

It was his generosity which initially impressed me, the continuity and inclusion in his storytelling. In fact, being in the same room with Federman is a lot like reading one of his books--sprinkled with double-dashes, at times conspicuously free of punctuation. At other times, he rewrites the story while you watch, and in his transparency, in his willingness to show you the form, you forget there is a writer at all...

CLICK HERE TO READ THE INNER-VIEW IN THE FALL 2006 ONLINE EDITION OF RAIN TAXI...

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